Chapter IV: Part 4

To those who knew him as Professor at Glasgow the secret of Lushington's influence was not far to seek. He came there into surroundings singularly unlike those of his earlier days, and with little to compensate in their grimy aspect for the beauty of his home and the hallowed associations of Trinity. It was not long before he had attuned himself to the scene of his new work, and gathered about him a circle of cherished friends, and had won the respect and regard of the great body of these Scottish students drawn from every class. For those who were touched by his enthusiastic love of the Greek language and its literature, his influence was something far deeper. He made no stirring appeals, and followed no startling methods. His perfect courtesy, combined with a firmness which needed no emphasis of manner to assert itself, sufficed to maintain absolute order amongst those large classes whose traditions made them not always amenable to discipline. But for those to whom his teaching was something of an inspiration, there was much more in his personality than this. Consummate dignity, combined with absolute simplicity of manner, a voice rich and melodious in tone, a diction graceful and harmonious but never studied or artificial--these, with a massive head and features of almost ideal beauty, made him a figure in the life of the College, deepened the impression of his calm and reverent enthusiasm for all that was noblest in thought and language, and gave to his influence an abiding force throughout the lifetime of his pupils. He offered no ready intimacy, and sought to form no following. But his words, few and well chosen, made themselves felt as pure gold, and a sentence of praise or of sympathy sank into the heart, and brought to life and work something that stirred reverence and enthusiasm. His work planted its root deeply, and sought for no outward recognition. It was only after his long career at Glasgow ended by his retirement in 1875 that what he had achieved in reviving an ideal of Greek scholarship was felt; and it was abiding enough to make him the choice of the students for an honour, rarely accorded to a former Professor--that of election as Lord Rector of the University in 1884. He pursued the even tenor of his way with no thought of self-aggrandizement; only slowly did that absolute modesty, linked with unassailable dignity, make itself felt as a power, radiating into the hearts of others his own illuminating enthusiasm for the ideals of noblest literature.

No poet could have had, bound to him by ties of closest affection, a critic more sympathetic, more reverent, and withal, more faithful in his appreciation. In the genius of Tennyson, he found the central joy and pride of his life; but his judgment was the more valuable, in that it was at all times absolutely sincere:

"You took my criticism on 'Maud' like an angel," he writes in 1856,
"which was very good indeed of you. I wish only you could be as glad
whenever I thoroughly admire your poems, as I am sorry whenever I
cannot."

One reference to a hint of criticism in a letter of June 1857, after the publication of the early Idylls "Enid" and "Nimue (Vivien)" is not without interest. Lushington writes to Tennyson:

I am very much grieved if anything that I wrote distrest you. I said
it all in love, and only my love could have prompted me to say it. My
tenderness for your fame will not let me be silent when I fear
anything that may cast a shade upon it, and few things can be more
certain to me than that these two poems, coming out by themselves,
would not receive their due of admiration. It would be quite different
if they were, as I hope they will be, supported by others of varied
matter and interest, giving more completeness and beauty of circular
grouping and relation. Such a work I want you to produce, and believe
you can, which would surpass all you have written yet.

The Idylls always had a peculiar interest for Lushington, and he had long encouraged their production. "I am beyond measure delighted," he writes in 1856, "to hear of Merlin and his compeers"; and again in the same year, and in his deepest pangs of anxiety about his boy, he does not forget the wish, "All genial inspiration from home breezes come to 'Enid.'" "Is anything of the Arthurian plan getting into shape?" he writes again in 1859. He was fervent in his admiration of the Dedication to Prince Albert of the new edition of the Idylls in 1862: "Its truth and loftiness and tenderness will be felt in a hundred years as much as now." "Anything of our own Arthur?" he writes again in 1866, "That's the true subject."

His letters (published and unpublished) to Tennyson convey not only the picture of a circle knit by warmest affection, but estimates of others always generous, and sometimes warm with enthusiastic admiration. Carlyle he met at Edinburgh in 1866, and was "struck with the beauty and sweetness of his face; through all its grimness ... there seems to be an infinite freshness of spirit with infinite sadness. His laugh is exactly like a boy's." In 1856 he writes: "Have you seen Browning's new volumes? I have been trying to construe them, and no gold had ever to be digged out through more stubborn rocks. But he is a poet as well as good fellow."

Through all these long years, with their vicissitudes of joy and sorrow, their long partings, and amid varied and widely separate occupations, the friendship remained as fresh as in the early days, an association of common delight in all that was noblest in literature, inspired by a bond of deepest poetic sympathy. To those who knew and venerated Lushington, it might seem that his deep and abiding reverence for the genius of one knit to him, as Tennyson was, by more than a brother's love, had in it something which inspired him in his work, and came in place of all thought of personal ambition. His learning enriched his life, and gave to his work as teacher its perfection and its illumination; but it never prompted him to publication, and he gave nothing to the press under his own name except his opening address as professor, his address to the students as Lord Rector, and a short Life of his friend Professor Ferrier, whose posthumous works he edited. In the one friendship he found the chief solace of his life. In the last letter addressed to Tennyson on the anniversary of his birthday, August 6, 1892--only three months before the Poet's death--Lushington wrote:

May the day be blest to you and all who are dear to you, and may the
year bring more blessing as it goes forward, must be the warm wish of
all who have felt the knowledge of you and your writings to be among
the greatest blessings of their life. Year after year my deep love and
admiration has grown, though I have not often of late had the
opportunity of expressing it, as we now so seldom meet. But I think
you know how largely indebted to you I feel for whatever is best and
truest in myself--a debt one cannot hope to repay.

No better picture of the friendship could be given than that enshrined in these words. Lushington survived Tennyson less than a year.

TENNYSON, FITZGERALD, CARLYLE, AND OTHER FRIENDS

By Dr. WARREN, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and now Professor of Poetry

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Glance at the wheeling Orb of change,
And greet it with a kindly smile;
Whom yet I see as there you sit
Beneath your sheltering garden-tree
And watch your doves about you flit,
And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee,
Or on your head their rosy feet,
As if they knew your diet spares
Whatever moved in that full sheet
Let down to Peter at his prayers.

* * * * *

And so I send a birthday line
Of greeting; and my son, who dipt
In some forgotten book of mine
With sallow scraps of manuscript,
And dating many a year ago,
Has hit on this, which you will take
My Fitz, and welcome, as I know
Less for its own than for the sake
Of one recalling gracious times,
When, in our younger London days,
You found some merit in my rhymes,
And I more pleasure in your praise.
To E. FITZGERALD (_Tiresias and other Poems_, p. 1).

Alfred Tennyson and Edward FitzGerald; _In Memoriam_ and _The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám_; "The Eternal Yea" and "The Eternal No," "the larger hope" and "the desperate sort of thing unfortunately at the bottom of all thinking men's minds, made Music of"--few friendships, few conjunctions, personal or literary, could be more interesting or more piquant.

What adds to the interest of the friendship is that it remained so long unknown to the literary or the general world, and is even now, perhaps, only partially appreciated. Yet it subsisted for nearly fifty years. It was close and constant. Though, as time went on, the two friends met less and less often, it was maintained by a steady interchange of letters and messages. The letters were naturally more on FitzGerald's side. Like most, though not perhaps quite all good letter-writers, FitzGerald was a great letter-writer. He was, as he often said, an idle man, and as he also said, he rather liked writing letters, "unlike most Englishmen (but I am Irish)," he added. Indeed, he seemed almost to prefer communication with his friends by letter to personal meetings, though these he enjoyed greatly when brought to the point.

Tennyson and FitzGerald were old friends, born in the same year, the notable year 1809. It is true that though they were at Cambridge together they were not then known to each other, except by sight. "I remember him there well," said FitzGerald, speaking of Tennyson, "a sort of Hyperion." They had many friendships, acquaintances, associations in common. Carlyle, Thackeray, Spedding, Merivale, Trench, W. H. Thompson, J. D. Allen, W. B. Donne, Brookfield, Cowell, Mrs. Kemble, Samuel Laurence, were known to them both. In their formative years they fell under the same influences, and read many of the same books. It was about 1835 that they became acquainted. They were brought together probably by their common and uncommon friend, James Spedding. They certainly met at his father's house, Mirehouse, near Bassenthwaite Lake, in the spring of 1835.

Tennyson had begun writing "In Memoriam" a little before this, _i.e._ early in 1834, soon after his friend Hallam's sudden death and sad home-bringing in the winter of 1833. He kept it on the stocks, as all know, for some seventeen years. It was published, at first anonymously, in 1850. The secret of its authorship was soon revealed, the poem found immediate acceptance and popularity. It became and has remained one of the most widely read poems in the language. In the meantime Tennyson, though not so famous as "In Memoriam" made him, had become well known through the 1842 volumes.

FitzGerald, on the contrary, was at that time quite unknown, except by his friendships, and to his friends. An Irishman, with the easygoing and _dolce far niente_ qualities which so often temper the brilliant genius of that race, sufficiently provided with means, he was naturally inclined for a quiet and easy, not to say indolent life. He deliberately chose from the first the _fallentis semita vitae_. He had some literary ambitions, and he wrote a few early poems, one or two of rare promise and beauty. One gift in particular was his--not, it is true, always leading him to action, yet in its passive or dynamic form constant and abundant almost to excess--loyalty in friendship. Once and fatally, it led him to take or submit to a positive step. He had been the attached friend of Bernard Barton the Quaker poet, the friend of Charles Lamb. When Barton died, from a mistaken sense of duty, FitzGerald not only collected his poems, a task more pious than profitable, but afterward, having meanwhile hesitated and halted too long in offering himself to one who was his real love, married his daughter who was not this. He left her, not indeed as is sometimes said, on the morrow of the wedding, but after separations and repeated attempts--in town and country--at reunion, and lived, as he had done before, alone and somewhat drearily ever afterwards.

Speculation has busied itself about his unfortunate marriage. The briefest but also the best pronouncement is probably his own letter written at the time to Mrs. Tennyson:

31 PORTLAND STREET, LONDON,
_March 19th, 1858_.

DEAR MRS. TENNYSON--My married life has come to an end: I am back
again in the old quarters, living as for the last thirty years--only
so much older, sadder, uglier, and worse!--If people want to go
further for the cause of this blunder, than the fact of two people of
very determined habits and temper first trying to change them at close
on fifty--they may lay nine-tenths of the blame on me. I don't want to
talk more of the matter, but one must say something.

The old life to which he returned was monotonous, recluse, unconventional. He spent most of his days in East Anglia, an unromantic region, yet not unbeautiful or wanting a charm of its own; in summer emerging into the sunshine, sitting on a chair in his garden as Tennyson's poem paints him, or on another chair on the deck of his boat, coasting the shores, or sailing up and down the creeks and estuaries with which that country abounds; in winter crouching over the fire, and in either chair smoking and endlessly reading.

In the earlier part of his life he moved about from one home to another, though never very far. In 1860 he settled down at Woodbridge in Suffolk, a pleasant, old-fashioned, provincial town, a sort of East Anglian Totnes, where the Deben, like the more famous Dart, seems to issue from a doorway of close-guarding hills to meet the salt tide, and begins the last stage of its cheerful journey to the open sea.

Just before this, in January of 1859, FitzGerald printed a small edition of a translation of a poem by a Persian astronomer, who died about 1123 A.D. The whole production of this famous piece seemed almost an accident. FitzGerald had been introduced, some half-dozen years earlier, to the study of Persian by his friend Mr. E. B. Cowell, a brother East Anglian, then in business in Ipswich. Cowell, wishing to pursue his studies further and take a Degree, went in 1851 as a married and somewhat mature student to Oxford, and there, in the Bodleian Library, came on a rare MS. of the "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám." It is a beautiful little volume, written upon parchment sprinkled with gold dust, in a fine black ink, with blue headings, gold divisions, and delicate Oriental illuminations in blue, gold, and green, at the beginning and the end, and is the earliest known MS. of the poem, dating from 1450 A.D. Of this he made a copy for FitzGerald, who kept it by him, and gradually produced a translation, if not rather a paraphrase. "I also amuse myself," he wrote in December 1853, "with poking out some Persian which E. Cowell would inaugurate me with. I go on with it because it is a point in common with him and enables me to study a little together."

In 1858 he had got his version into a shape somewhat to his mind, and sent it to _Fraser's Magazine_. It was kept for about a year, when FitzGerald asked for it back, and had 250 copies printed early in 1859. He gave away a few and sent the rest to Quaritch.

What ensued is one of the curiosities of literature. FitzGerald did not expect any success or vogue for the work. True, he had toiled at it. "Very few People," he said, "have ever taken such Pains in Translation as I have; though certainly not to be literal." And when he had finished he liked "to make an end of the matter by print." But that was all. "I hardly know," he added, "why I print any of these things which nobody buys."

Quaritch, as FitzGerald expected, found no sale for _Omar_. He reduced the price from five shillings to one shilling, and then to one penny. Rossetti heard of it through Whitley Stokes, and showed it to Swinburne. They were attracted by it and bought sixpenny-worth. Quaritch raised his price to twopence. They carried off a few more, and the rest, a little later, were eagerly bought up at a guinea or more apiece. Yet the poem remained long known to very few. Quaritch published a second edition, again a small one, nine years later in 1868, and four years later still, a third small edition in 1872, and in 1879 a fourth edition, including Salámán and Absál. The third edition came out just about the time I was going to Oxford as an undergraduate, and it was then that I first heard of it through J. A. Symonds and H. G. Dakyns, who gave me in 1874 a copy which Symonds had presented to him, and which I still possess. Even at Oxford I found only a few, either graduates or undergraduates, who heeded it or knew anything about it. Professor Henry Smith was the only senior I can remember who spoke to me about it, telling me of the previous editions, and praising its merits one day as we turned it over together in Parker's shop. But stealthily and underground it made its way. Edition followed edition, with increasing rapidity. Suddenly it became ubiquitously popular, and it is now certainly one of the best-known pieces of the kind in the language. Messrs. Macmillan put it, in 1899, after a dozen times reprinting it, into their Golden Treasury Series. They had to reprint three times in that year, and this edition has been in constant demand. But there are ever so many others. The poem has been reproduced in a hundred forms, both in England and America, illustrated, illuminated, decorated, annotated. A reprint of the first edition is once more sold for a penny. It has been translated into Latin verse. There is a Concordance to it. A whole literature has sprung up around it. An "Omar Khayyam Club" was founded in 1892. Pious pilgrimages have been made to the translator's tomb, and Omar's roses planted over it, and verses recited in celebration of both poet and poem.

Of all this immense vogue and success, as his letters show, FitzGerald himself never dreamed. Even when in 1885 Tennyson published, as the dedication of _Tiresias and other Poems_, the lines "To E. FitzGerald," the translator of _Omar_ was still, for most readers, "a veiled prophet." To-day, when the poem has become one of the utterances of the century, lovers of paradox have even ventured to hint that instead of FitzGerald being known as the friend of Tennyson, Tennyson might be known hereafter as the friend of FitzGerald.

FitzGerald is certainly known on his own account. The publication of his letters by his loyal old friend, Dr. Aldis Wright, revealed the man himself to the world. The publication of Tennyson's Life by his son aided the process. Every one will remember the part which FitzGerald plays there, beginning with the meeting at James Spedding's house in the Lakes in 1835, his early enthusiastic admiration, when he fell in love both with the man and his poems, and then his ever-constant friendship, tempered by grumbling, and what appears sometimes almost grudging criticism. He became the friend, it must be remembered, not only of Alfred, but of the whole family, and especially of Frederick, the eldest brother. "All the Tennysons are to be wished well," he says in a letter of 1845. Though he affected to think little of society and hated snobbery as much as Tennyson or his other friend Thackeray himself, he greatly admired the better qualities of the English gentry, and had even a kindly weakness for their foibles. When Frederick went to live in Italy he wrote: "I love that such men as Frederick should be abroad: so strong, haughty, and passionate."

When FitzGerald first met Alfred, the poetic family was still living on at Somersby after their father's death. He went there and fell in love with their mother, and with their mode of life, and with the region, where "there were not only such good seas, but such fine Hill and Dale among the Wolds as people in general scarce thought on." It was characteristic of him that he used to say that Alfred should never have left Lincolnshire.

FitzGerald kept up the friendship mainly, as he did most of his friendships, by letter. In particular, he made a point of writing to the Alfred Tennysons twice a year, once in the summer and again about Christmas time. He addressed himself sometimes to the Poet himself, sometimes to Mrs. Tennyson, and in later days to their eldest son. To Frederick Tennyson, who went to live in Italy, as the readers of Dr. Aldis Wright's volume will remember, he wrote a whole series of letters, many of them very long and full. Of all these letters--to his father, his mother, himself, and his uncle--the present Lord Tennyson has placed a collection in my hands for the purpose of this article. The story of the friendship which it is an attempt to sketch will best be told by pretty full quotations from them. Many of them, and indeed most of those to his father and mother, are now published for the first time.

FitzGerald did not always succeed, and indeed did not expect to succeed, in drawing a reply from Tennyson himself. In a letter written in the summer of 1860 to Mrs. Tennyson he makes a very amusing reference to this, and also throws some light on his own habits:

Thank old Alfred for his letter which was an unexpected pleasure. I
like to hear of him and you once or twice in the year: but I know he
is no dab at literature at any time, poor fellow. "Paltry Poet"--Let
him believe it is anything but want of love for him that keeps me out
of the Isle of Wight: nor is it indolence neither.--But to say _what
it is_ would make me write too much about myself. Only let him believe
what I _do_ say.

Their relations were always of this playful, intimate kind, resting on long acquaintance. If FitzGerald was amused by "Alfred," Tennyson, on the other hand, was well used to his old friend's humour. When we spoke about him, he dwelt, I recollect, on this particular trait, and told me, to illustrate it, the story which is now, I think, pretty well known, how, when some common acquaintance had bored them with talking about his titled friends, "Old Fitz," as at last he took up his candle to go to bed, turned to Tennyson and said, quietly and quaintly, "I knew a Lord once, but he's dead."

When Tennyson spoke of _Omar_ he said, what he has said in verse, that he admired it greatly:

Than which I know no version done
In English more divinely well;
A planet equal to the sun
Which cast it.

But of course he was aware that it was by no means always faithful to the original. It is indeed a liberal, rather than a literal translation--how liberal, all know who have been at the pains to compare FitzGerald's poem with any of the many literal versions to which it has given rise.

In quite the early Twickenham days, just after their marriage, he would invite himself to dine or stay with Tennyson and his wife, nay more, would ask to bring friends to see them, such as the Cowells and W. B. Donne. In 1854 he stayed at Farringford for a fortnight, a visit he always remembered, and often referred to, with pleasure. Together he and Tennyson worked at Persian. He also sketched, and botanized with the Poet. But he could not be got to repeat the visit; and indeed, as he said himself, it was the last of the kind he paid anywhere, except to Mrs. Kemble. When he reached London, just after this visit, he wrote to Tennyson:

60 LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
_June 15th, 1854_.

MY DEAR ALFRED--I called at Quaritch's to look for another Persian
Dictionary. I see he has a copy of Eastwick's Gulistan for _ten
shillings_: a translation (not Eastwick's, however, but one quite
sufficient for the purpose) can be had for five shillings. Would you
like me to buy them and send them down to you by the next friend who
travels your way: or will you wait till some good day I can lend you
_my_ Eastwick (which is now at Oxford)? I could mark some of the
pieces which I think it might not offend you to read: though you will
not care greatly for anything in it.

Oh, such an atmosphere as I am writing in!--Yours,

E. F. G.

I left my little Swedenborg at Farringford. Please keep it for me, as
it was a gift from my sister.

The note of the letters is always the same--warm affection, deep underlying admiration and regard, superficial banter and play of humour, and humorous, half-grumbling criticism. When they met face to face, after being parted for twenty years, they fell at once into exactly the old vein. FitzGerald was surprised at this, but he need not have been. Both were the sincerest and most natural of men, and nothing but distance and absence had occurred to sever them.

From the first he had conceived an intense and almost humble-minded admiration for Alfred. One of his earliest utterances describes his feelings, and strikes, with his keen critical perception, the true note. "I will say no more of Tennyson," he wrote, "than that the more I have seen of him, the more cause I have to think him great. His little humours and grumpinesses were so droll that I was always laughing,--I must, however say further, that I felt, what Charles Lamb describes, a sense of depression at times from the over-shadowing of a so much more lofty intellect than my own--_I could not be mistaken in the universality of his mind_."

His descriptions in _Euphranor_, published some sixteen years later, of "the only living and like to live poet he had known," tell the same tale. They speak of Tennyson's union of passion and strength. "As King Arthur shall bear witness, no young Edwin he, though as a great Poet comprehending all the softer stops of human Emotion in that Register where the Intellectual, no less than what is called the Poetical, faculty predominated. As all who knew him know, a Man at all points, Euphranor--like your Digby, of grand proportion and feature...."

There was no one for whose opinion he had so much regard, grumble though he might, and criticize as he would. He had a special preference for the poems at whose production he had assisted, which he had seen in MS., or heard rehearsed orally. Toward the later poems his feeling was not the same. The following extracts are all equally characteristic:

MARKETHILL, WOODBRIDGE,
_November 20th, 1861_.

MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--It gives me a strange glow of pleasure when I come
upon your verses, as I now do in every other book I take up, with no
name of author, as every other person knows whose they are. I love to
light on the verses for their own sake, and to remember having heard
nearly all I care for--and what a lot that is!--from your own lips.

MARKETHILL, WOODBRIDGE,
_December 14th, 1862_.

MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--Christmas coming reminds me of my half-yearly call
on you.

I have, as usual, nothing to tell of myself: boating all the summer
and reading Clarissa Harlowe since. You and I used to talk of the Book
more than twenty years ago. I believe I am better read in it than
almost any one in existence now--No wonder: for it is almost
intolerably tedious and absurd--But I can't read the "Adam Bedes,"
"Daisy Chains," etc., at all. I look at my row of Sir Walter Scott and
think with comfort that I can always go to him of a winter evening,
when no other book comes to hand.

_To Frederick Tennyson._

_November 15th, 1874._

I wrote my yearly letter to Mrs. Alfred a fortnight ago, I think; but
as yet have had no answer. Some Newspaper people make fun of a Poem of
Alfred's, the "Voice and the Peak," I think: giving morsels of which
of course one could not judge. But I think he had better have done
singing: he has sung well--_tempus silere_, etc.

But his love for the man and his underlying belief in his opinion and genius never varied. "I don't think of you so little, my dear old Alfred," he wrote one day in the middle of their friendship, "but rejoice in the old poems and in yourself, young or old, and worship you (I may say) as I do no other man, and am glad I can worship one man still."

His delight when he found that Alfred had really liked _Omar_ was unusually _naïf_ and keen. He forgot his grumbling, and wrote to Mrs. Tennyson:

_To Mrs. Tennyson._

_November 4/67._

To think of Alfred's approving my old Omar! I never should have
thought he even knew of it. Certainly _I_ should never have sent it to
him, always supposing that he would not approve anything but a literal
Prose translation--unless from such hands as can do original work and
therefore do _not_ translate other People's! Well: now I have got
Nicolas and sent a copy to Cowell, and when he is at liberty again we
shall beat up old Omar's Quarters once more.

I'll tell you a very pretty Book. Alfred Tennyson's Pastoral Poems, or
rather Rural Idylls (only I must hate the latter word) bound up in a
volume, Gardener's, Miller's, Daughters; Oak; Dora; Audley Court, etc.

Oh the dear old 1842 days and editions! Spedding thinks I've shut up
my mind since. Not to "Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud." When I ask People
what Bird says that of an evening, they say "The Thrush."

I wish you would make one of your Boys write out the "Property" Farmer
Idyll. Do now, pray.

E. F. G.

When he had first "discovered" Omar, and was beginning to work upon him, Tennyson (who was then finishing the early "Idylls of the King") had been one of the first to whom he wrote. It is worth remembering that FitzGerald was then in deep depression. It was the middle of the sad period of his brief, unhappy married life. This had proved a failure in London. It was proving a failure now in the country. He wrote:

GORLESTONE, GREAT YARMOUTH,
_July 1857_.

MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--Please direct the enclosed to Frederick. I wrote
him some months ago getting Parker to direct; but have had no reply.
_You_ won't write to me, at which I can't wonder. I keep hoping for
King Arthur--or part of him. I have got here to the seaside--a dirty,
Dutch-looking sea, with a dusty Country in the rear; but the place is
not amiss for one's Yellow Leaf. I keep on reading foolish Persian
too: chiefly because of it's connecting me with the Cowells, now
besieged in Calcutta. But also I have really got hold of an old
Epicurean so desperately impious in his recommendations to live only
for _To-day_ that the good Mahometans have scarce dared to multiply
MSS. of him. He writes in little quatrains, and has scarce any of the
iteration and conceits to which his people are given. One of the last
things I remember of him is that--"God gave me this turn for drink,
perhaps God was drunk when he made me"--which is not strictly pious.
But he is very tender about his roses and wine, and making the most of
this poor little life.

All which is very poor stuff you will say. Please to remember me to
the Lady. I don't know when I shall ever see you again; and yet you
can't think how often I wish to do so, and never forget you, and never
shall, my dear old Alfred, in spite of Epicurus. But I don't grow
merrier.--Yours ever,

E. F. G.

In 1872 he was busy with the _third_ edition of _Omar_, and wrote to consult Tennyson. The first edition had contained only seventy-five quatrains. The second was a good deal longer, containing one hundred and ten. The third was again shortened to one hundred and one:

WOODBRIDGE, _March 25th, 1872_.

MY DEAR ALFRED--It would be impertinent in me to trouble you with a
question about _my_ grand Works. But, as you let me know (through Mrs.
T.) that you liked Omar, I want to know whether you read the _First_
or _Second_ Edition; and, in case you saw _both, which you thought
best_? The reason of my asking you is that Quaritch (Publisher) has
found admirers in America who have almost bought up the whole of the
last enormous Edition--amounting to 200 copies, I think--so he wishes
to embark on 200 more, I suppose: and says that he, and his Readers,
like the first Edition best: so he would reprint these.

Of course _I_ thought the second best: and I think so still: partly (I
fear) because the greater number of verses gave more time for the day
to pass from morning till night.

Well, what I ask you to do is, to tell me which of the two is best, if
you have seen the two. If you have _not_, I won't ask you further:--if
you have, you can answer in two words. And your words would be more
than all the rest.

This very little business is all I have eyes for now; except to write
myself once more ever your's and Mrs. Tennyson's,

E. F. G.

Another letter a little later refers to the same reprinting of _Omar_:

MY DEAR ALFRED--I must thank you, as I ought, for your second note.
The best return I can make is _not_ to listen to Mrs. Tennyson's P.S.,
which bids me send another Omar:--for I have only got Omar the Second,
I am sure now _you_ would not like him so well as the first (mainly
because of "too much"). I think he might disgust you with both.

So though two lines from you would have done more to decide on his
third appearance (if Quaritch still wishes that), I will not put you
to that trouble, but do as I can alone--cutting out some, and
retaining some; and will send you the result if it comes into type.

You used to talk of my crotchets: but I am quite sure you have one
little crotchet about this Omar: which deserves well in its way, but
not so well as you write of it. You know that though I do not think it
worth while to compete with you in your paltry poetical capacity, I
won't surrender in the critical, not always, at least. And, at any
rate, I have been more behind the scenes in this little matter than
you. But I do not the less feel your kindness in writing about it: for
I think you would generally give £100 sooner than write a letter. And
I am--Yours ever,

E. F. G.

The next year, in 1873, he wrote again, touching on the same theme and others:

DEAR MRS. TENNYSON--I remember Franklin Lushington perfectly--at
Farringford in 1854; almost the last visit I paid anywhere: and as
pleasant as any, after, or before. I have still some sketches I made
of the place: "Maud, Maud, Maud," etc., was then read to me, and has
rung in my ears ever after. Mr. Lushington, I remember, sketched also.
If he be with you still, please tell him that I hope his remembrance
of me is as pleasant as mine of him.

I think I told you that Frederick came here in August, having (of
course) missed you on his way. The Mistress of Trinity wrote to me
some little while ago, telling me, among other things, that she, and
others, were much pleased with your son Hallam, whom they thought to
be like the "Paltry Poet" (poor fellow).

The Paltry one's Portrait is put in a frame and hung up at my
_château_, where I talk to it sometimes, and every one likes to see
it. It is clumsy enough, to be sure; but it still recalls the old man
to me better than the bearded portraits[18] which are now the fashion.

But oughtn't your Hallam to have it over his mantelpiece at Trinity?

The first volume of Forster's Dickens has been read to me of a night,
making me love him, up to 30 years of age at any rate; till then,
quite unspoilt, even by his American triumphs, and full of good
humour, generosity, and energy. I wonder if Alfred remembers dining
at his house with Thackeray and me, me taken there, quite unaffected,
and seeming to wish any one to show off rather than himself. In the
evening we had a round game at cards and mulled claret. Does A. T.
remember?

I have had my yearly letter from Carlyle, who writes of himself as
better than last year. He sends me a Mormon Newspaper, with a very
sensible sermon in it from the life of Brigham Young, as also the
account of a visit to a gentleman of Utah with eleven wives and near
forty children, all of whom were very happy together. I am just going
to send the paper to Archdeacon Allen to show him how they manage
these things over the Atlantic.

About Omar I must say that _all_ the changes made in the last copy are
not to be attributed to my own perverseness; the same thought being
constantly repeated with directions, whether by Omar or others, in the
500 quatrains going under his name. I had not eyes, nor indeed any
further appetite, to refer to the Original, or even to the French
Translation; but altered about the "Dawn of Nothing" as A. T. pointed
out its likeness to his better property.[19] I really didn't, and
don't, think it matters what changes are made in that Immortal Work
which is to last about five years longer. I believe it is the
strong-minded American ladies who have chiefly taken it up; but they
will soon have something wickeder to digest, I dare say.

I am going to write out for Alfred a few lines from a _Finnish_ Poem
which I find quoted in Lowell's "Among my Books"--which I think a good
Book. But I must let my eyes rest now.

In September 1876 a lucky chance brought Tennyson and himself face to face again after twenty years. The Poet was travelling with his son, and together they visited him at Woodbridge. They found him, as Tennyson describes, in his garden at Little Grange. He was delighted to see them, and specially pleased with the son's relation and attitude to his father.

Together he and Tennyson walked about the garden and talked as of old. When Tennyson complained of the multitude of poems which were sent him, Old Fitz recommended him to imitate Charles Lamb and throw them into his neighbour's cucumber frames. Tennyson noticed a number of small sunflowers, with a bee half-dying--probably from the wet season--on each, "Like warriors dying on their shields, Fitz," he said. He reverted, of course, to his favourite Crabbe, and told the story of how Crabbe (when he was a chaplain in the country) felt an irresistible longing to see the sea, mounted a horse suddenly, rode thirty miles to the coast, saw it, and rode back comforted.

FitzGerald did not compliment them on their looks, because, he said, he had always noticed men said, "How well you are looking!" whenever you were going to be very ill. Therefore he had ceased saying it to any one. He told, too, a story of a vision, how he had one day clearly seen from outside his sister and her children having tea round the table in his dining-room. He then saw his sister quietly withdraw from the room, so as not to disturb the children. At that moment she died in Norfolk.[20]

He wrote shortly after this visit to Tennyson:

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE,
_October 31st, 1876_.

MY DEAR ALFRED--I am reading delightful Boccacio through once more,
escaping to it from the Eastern Question as the company he tells of
from the Plague. I thought of you yesterday when I came to the
Theodore and Honoria story, and read of Teodoro "_un mezzo meglio per
la pineta entrato_"--"More than a Mile immersed within the wood," as
you used to quote from Glorious John. This Decameron must be read in
its Italian, as my Don in his Spanish: the language fits either so
exactly. I am thinking of trying Faust in German, with Hayward's Prose
Translation. I never could take to it in any Shape yet: and--_don't
believe_ in it: which I suppose is a piece of Impudence.

But neither this, nor _The Question_ are you called on to answer--much
use if I did call. But I am--always yours,

E. F. G.

When I thought of you and Boccacio, I was sitting in the Sun on that
same Iron Seat with the pigeons about us, and the Trees still in Leaf.

One of the poems after 1842 which he liked was the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington," though characteristically he made a somewhat fastidious criticism on the "vocalization" of the opening.

"I mumble over your old verses in my memory as often as any one's," he
wrote, "and was lately wishing you had found bigger vowels for the
otherwise fine opening of the Duke's Funeral:

'Twas at the Royal Feast for Persia won, etc.
(Dryden.)

Bury the great Duke, etc.
(A. T.)

So you see I am always the same crotchetty

FITZ."

The paradox is that it was FitzGerald who was always urging "Alfred" to go on, and finding fault with him for not doing more, and not singing in grander, sterner strains,--not becoming the Tyrtaeus of his country. In truth, Tennyson's strength and physical force and his splendid appearance in youth, added to his mental grandeur, seem to have deeply impressed his youthful contemporaries. He was, they felt, heroic, and made for heroic songs and deeds. When he did go on, in his own way, FitzGerald did not like it, or only half liked it. For Tennyson did go forward on his own lines. He had not a little to daunt and deter him. He, too, had his sensitiveness and capacity for feeling and passion not less exquisite than FitzGerald's own. FitzGerald said his friendships were more like loves. He was not alone in this attitude. "What _passions_ our friendships were," wrote Thackeray, another of the set, the early friend of both FitzGerald and Tennyson. But of no friendship could such language be used more truly than of that which existed between Tennyson and Arthur Hallam. When, however, the sundering blow fell, and the friendship which was a love lay shattered, Tennyson braced himself and went on. For

It becomes no man to nurse despair,
But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms
To follow up the worthiest till he die.

His faith, even to the last, was still at times dashed with doubt, for, with "the universality of his mind," he could not help seeing many sides of a question. But he "followed the Gleam," as he has himself described. FitzGerald did the opposite. He drifted, he dallied, he delayed, he despaired. He ruined his own life in great measure by his marriage. His early ambitions seemed to wither prematurely, and he let his career slide. Yet he was always, as Mr. A. C. Benson has excellently brought out, admirable in his sincerity, his friendly kindliness, his innocence, his conscientious adherence to his literary standards. Too much has been made of his unconventionality, his slovenliness and slackness, his love of low or common company. He remained a gentleman and a man of business. Thackeray, a man of the world, when he was starting for America, wanted to leave him the legal guardian of his daughters. He was an Epicurean, not a Pyrrhonist. He took life seriously. He showed at times an austerity of spirit which was surprising. His _Omar_ has often, and naturally, been compared to Lucretius and to Ecclesiastes. There is probably more of Lucretius about the poem, but more of Ecclesiastes about the translator.

There is another Epicurean, with whose tenets he might have been thought to show even more sympathy--the easy-going poet-critic Horace. _Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam_ is the constant burden of FitzGerald's strain. His friendship, early formed, with Tennyson, the contrast of their divergent views, might be compared with the friendship of Horace and Virgil. For Virgil, too, began as an Epicurean. But FitzGerald was not content with Horace. "Why is it," he wrote, "that I can never take up with Horace, so sensible, agreeable, elegant, and sometimes even grand?" It was, perhaps, just that masculine and worldly element that put him off. Yet he not seldom quotes Horace, and perhaps liked him better than he knew. "_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_," he wrote in a copy of Polonius which he gave to a special friend, and Nature was what he was always seeking in poetry. Still he preferred Virgil, just as he really preferred Tennyson.

Though he was destined to produce a poem which bids as fair for immortality as any of its time, he did not think highly of his own powers as a poet. But he did plume himself on being a critic. "I pretend to no Genius," he said, "but to Taste, which according to my aphorism is the feminine of Genius." This was another gift in common. Tennyson was himself a consummate critic, as FitzGerald was the first to recognize.

FitzGerald had his limitations and his prejudices--his "crotchets." He did not like many even of those whom the world has agreed to admire. He did not like Euripides or even Homer. With Goethe's poems he could not get on. He eschewed Victor Hugo. He liked, indeed, very little of the prose and none of the poetry of his contemporaries, except that of the Tennysons. He could not away with Browning. Arnold, he wrote down "a pedant." He thought very little of Rossetti and Swinburne, though the former, especially, was a great admirer not only of _Omar_ but of _Jami_ and some of the Spanish translations. He tried to read Morris's _Jason_, but said, "No go." He "could not read the _Adam Bedes_ and the _Daisy Chains_." All this must be remembered when we read his criticism of Tennyson's later work which belonged to the period of these writers and their productions. But within certain limits he was a very fine critic. It cannot be said of him as of his special favourite among Greek poets, Sophocles, that

He saw life steadily and saw it whole.

As he was aware himself, he by no means saw it whole. But with his detachment and his critical gift, it may, perhaps, be said:

He saw life lazily, but saw it plain.

To the question of Browning's merits, or want of merits, he is always returning. A very characteristic letter is a long, discursive one, written to Tennyson himself in 1867:

MARKETHILL, WOODBRIDGE,
_November 3rd, 1867_.

MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--I abuse Browning myself; and get others to abuse
him; and write to you about it; for the sake of easing my own
heart--not yours. Why is it (as I asked Mrs. Tennyson) that, while the
Magazine critics are belauding him, _not one_ of the men I know, who
are not inferior to the writers in the Athenæum, Edinburgh, etc., can
_endure_, and (for the most part) can read him at all? I mean his last
poem. Thus it has been with the Cowells, Trinity Thompsons, Donnes,
and some others whom you don't know, but in whose candour and judgment
I have equal confidence, men and women too.

Since I wrote to your wife, Pollock, a great friend of Browning's,
writes to me. "I agree with you about Browning and A. T. I can't
understand it. _Ter conatus eram_ to get through the Ring and the
Book--and failing to perform the feat in its totality, I have stooped
to the humiliation to point out extracts for me (they having read it
_all quite through_ three times) and still could not do it. So I
pretend to have read it, and let Browning so suppose when I talk to
him about it. But don't you be afraid"? (N.B. I am _not_, only angry)
"things will come round, and A. T. will take his right place again,
and R. B. will have all the honours due to his learning, wit and
philosophy."

Then I had the curiosity to ask Carlyle in my yearly letter to him. He
also is, or was, a friend of B.'s, and used to say that he looked on
him as a sort of light-cavalry man to follow you. Well, Carlyle
writes, "Browning's book I read--_insisted_ on reading: it is full of
talent, of energy, and effort, but totally without _backbone_, or
basis of common sense. I think among the absurdest books ever written
by a gifted man." (Italics are his.)

Who, then, are the people that write the nonsense in the Reviews? I
believe the reason at the bottom is that R. B. is a clever London
diner-out, etc., while A. T. holds aloof from the newspaper men, etc.
"Long life to him!" But I don't understand why Venables, or some of
the men who think as I do, and wield trenchant pens in high places,
why they don't come out, and set all this right. I only wish I could
do it: but I can only see the right thing, but not prove it to others.
"I do not like you, Dr. Fell," etc.

I found a Memorandum the other day (I can't now light on it) of a
Lincolnshire story about "Haxey Wood" or "Haxey Hood"--which--if I had
not told it to you, but left it as by chance in your way some thirty
years ago, you would have turned into a shape to outlast all R. B.'s
poems put together. There is no use in my finding and sending it now,
because it doesn't do (with Paltry Poets) to try and drag them to the
water. The two longest and worst tales (I think) in Crabbe's Tales of
the Hall, were suggested to him by Sir S. Romilly, and "a lady in
Wiltshire." I wish Murray would let me make a volume of "Selections
from Crabbe"--which I know I could, so that _common_ readers would
wish to read the whole original; which now scarce any one does; nor
can one wonder they do not. But Crabbe will flourish when R. B. is
dead and buried. Lots of lines which he cut out of his MS. would be
the beginning of a little fortune to others. I happened on this
couplet the other day:

The shapeless purpose of a soul that feels,
And half suppresses wrath and half reveals.

Not that Crabbe is to live by single couplets or epigrams, but by
something far better, as you know better than I. There is a long
passage in the Tales of the Hall (Old Bachelor) which always reminds
me of you, A. T., where the Old Bachelor recounts how he pleaded with
his Whig father to be allowed to marry the Tory Squire's daughter;
when,

Coolly my father looked, and much enjoy'd
The broken eloquence his eye destroy'd, etc.

and then pleads to the Tory mother of the girl.

Methinks I have the tigress in my eye, etc.

Do look at this, A. T., when you get the Book, and don't let my praise
set you against it.

I have written you a very long letter, you see, with one very bad eye
too. I thought it had mended, by help of cold water and goggles; but
these last three days it has turned rusty again. I believe it misses
the sea air.

[Greek: deinôn t' aêma pneumatôn ekoimise[21]
stenonta ponton.]

Do you quite understand this [Greek: ekoimise]? But what lines,
understood or not! The two last words go alongside of my little ship
with me many a time. Well, Alfred, neither you, nor the Mistress, are
to answer this letter, which I still hope may please you, as it is
(all the main part) written very loyally, and is all true. Now,
good-bye, and remember me as your old

E. F. G.

_Ne cherchez point, Iris, à percer les ténèbres[22]
Dont les Dieux sagement ont voilé l'Avenir;
Et ne consultez point tant de Devins célèbres
Pour chercher le moment qui doit nous désunir.
Livrez-vous au plaisir; tout le reste est frivole;
Et songez que, trop court pour de plus longs projets,
Tandis que nous parlons le Temps jaloux s'envole,
Et que ce Temps, hélas! est perdu pour jamais._